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Japan's Rakuten acquires VC-backed Slice

  • Andrew Woodman
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Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has acquired Slice, a US-based e-commerce mobile app backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners and DCM, among others.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Set up in 2010, Slice helps users to check online spending by allowing them to track packages, store online purchase information and get price drop alerts across several e-commerce platforms. The app - which is available on Android and iOS mobile operating systems - is free to download. Slice charges a fee to websites like Amazon to use its software and access some customer data.

The company, which employs around 70 people, first raised two seed rounds totaling $5.6 million from unnamed investors in 2010. Lightspeed and DCM then took part in a $9.4 million Series A round in 2011 and returned last year to invest $23 million as part of a consortium which also included Rakuten.

The acquisition is understood to come at a time when Rakuten is looking to expand its US business and compete with the likes of eBay and Amazon.

This is not Rakuten's first acquisition of a US start-up. In June last year it bought Webgistix, a logistics and e-commerce fulfillment service provider. Prior to that, in 2010, it paid $250 million for online retail marketplace Buy.com.

 

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